Tales of my Master in Integrative Neuroscience based in Edinburgh, Scotland

Menu

Collaborate!

As you may have gathered from my last post, I was sent to Munich in January to expand my in vivo imaging skills. My stay was funded by a travelling fellowship awarded to me Journal Development (Company of Biologists), and I wanted to share my experience here with you. I will also be writing an official report for the Node in the upcoming weeks, so keep an eye on that!

I still spent New Year’s Eve in Scotland and was able to catch the magnificent fireworks on camera.

Collaboration is one of the principles that makes science great – skills and knowledge are shared and ultimately science may advance further than just with a single lab. I believe my two month stay at the Institute of Physiological Genomics at the University of Munich set the first stone for a further collaboration between Edinburgh and Munich. We are both interested in brain repair, even though some aspects of our interest might differ. In particular, it was my goal to learn two photon in vivo imaging of adult zebrafish. This technique was developed in the lab I visited, and they are the only lab to do it, so naturally it was very exciting for me to visit.

The lab. The group was very big (~50 people, divided into subgroups) and had lots of students, which allowed the formation of a nice social community. Lunches were spent together in the insanely cheap cantine, which even offered Bavarian specialties and beer. Sometimes, we met up afterwards for game nights, smoothie evenings or laser tag, which was a lot of fun.

In the first weeks of my arrival, there was a lot.. a LOT of snow. Driving felt like skating on wheels.

Late nights at work at the Biomedical Centre

I liked the new building which was very bright and had lots of window space which was used by plants in this case (in the kitchen)

There were lots and lots of meetings, which sometimes made lab work a bit hard – anyone who has ever worked in a lab will know that these can interfere with experiments. There were lab meetings, zebrafish meetings (sadly, this was not a meeting of zebrafish dressed in suits), gliosis and journal clubs. On average, there were about two to three talks a week of multiple hours, but I gained a lot of new knowledge about neurogenesis, stem cell reprogramming and novel techniques such as single cell RNA sequencing.

My lab work was initially mostly carried out shadowing a talented PhD student, Tamara. She is currently the only person doing the technique I aimed to learn and therefore she introduced me to the wonders, and annoyances, of two photon live imaging and the steps that precede it. I was happy that I was also of help by showing her the all-round utility star Blue Tack, which is not known in Germany: we used it to refine the set-up for the imaging and fixing tubes in place. Together, we designed and performed many experiments relevant for my project and also had lots of chocolate and coffee breaks, which allowed us to bond. Hopefully, she will be able to visit me in Edinburgh some point! 🙂

3D rendering of radial glia in the telencephalon of a living fish. I think it’s pretty cool, you can see the processes very nicely.

The master’s students office/write up area was our chocolate hub. On Valentine’s day, we got treated especially well!

The food. Of course, I have to mention the food. I have already talked about the cheap cantine, and most things were in general cheaper than in Edinburgh. Groceries and beverages especially, although the rent in Munich is ridiculously high (you can expect to pay around 700-800€ monthly for a room). One thing I was very happy about were the bakeries – I love good bread and this is something where the UK is still lagging behind. Luckily, I managed to complete my stay without any exorbitant weight gain!

Krapfen, basically like doughnuts but filled with jam, cream or nougat; they’re a specialty during Carneval time and they’re so good!

A friend from school showed me this great new pizza place in Munich – my part italian side approves!

I made my room in Munich a bit more cosy by bringing decorations and my stuffed animals so I can feel at home even in a foreign country.

The free time. Munich is very close to my home town (about two hour’s drive), and my family was nice and trusting enough to lend me one of their cars for the two months. This enabled me to go home most weekends and spend some time outdoors and go skiing. My family was happy to see me more often than when I live in Edinburgh.

Skiing in Hochoetz.

The famous Innsbruck façades

The lovely ski region of Seefeld.

On an early morning, I was able to catch the moon and some fog in the valley while driving over the mountains to Germany.

More skiing and lifts…

The snow made everything look like in a winder wonderland.

I also spent some of my free time exploring Munich, but it is simply too big for my liking (I grew up in a village of 2000 people and moved my way up all the way to 400,000 in Edinburgh, I think this is the maximum/ideal size for me) 🙂

The main square (Marienplatz) in Munich’s old town is the home of this beautiful building.

Munich is one of the main destinations of any artist touring in Europe, and so I was able to go to this quiet and small gig by Andy Shauf, which is a canadian singer-songwriter.

To sum up, my stay has definitely advanced my practical skills, I have made new friends and was able to gather new knowledge in my field; it was an adventure! An adventure that will hopefully lead to scientific advancement. We are already planning to offer some master’s projects with this new technique for the next year, so if you’re interested, let me know.

However, I am also very happy to be back in my beloved Edinburgh 🙂

To end my post today, I decided to include one comic I liked by Sketching Science regarding the recent viral video of the BBC Interview.